Woodworking blog entries tagged with 'prototype'

Hey guys!
Back from the mountains (alas, too soon).
First this quickie blog post about what happens when you order a pen turning mandrel without owning a lathe. Being a cheap skate, and a long-time reuse-recycle-minded guy, I of course built myself a wee lathe with all recycled parts: motor from an old printer (or photocopier, can’t really remember, I dismantled so many of both…), pulleys and timing belt also from reclaimed hardware, so for the bearings (hidden in the block ...

Hey guys,
This is a first attempt at making a homemade tablesaw for cutting thin material.I slapped this first prototype together in around two hours (hence the crappy Nokia pictures), mainly because it was freezing cold inside my shop and I had a hurt elbow and only the bandsaw to cut plywood strips (which lead to massive hand-planing of the cuts to straighten them – surprisingly easy on plywood with a well-honed plane blade).
Anyway, here are a few shots of my latest hoax, all m...

This is my soap dispenser. There are many others like it but this one is mine.
And once it’s empty there are a few goodies to look for inside the pumps of these things:
The hard plastic balls are very nice and shiny (not as in this picture, I stuffed it in a hole in my tabletop so it wouldn’t move during the picture). I collect them for fun and maybe someday I will have enough to make a bracelet or something ;)
The stainless steel spring in these things is of good...

Hi there welcome back for another installment of the chess corner. Today’s topic is turning bishops for a chess set. It’s very satisfying to be able to be in a position when creating your own chess set to put your own style on the pieces. For instance let’s look at a few bishops I cooked up in the chess corner. These look very close to a standard bishop except for the very top. Instead of the tiny little tip on most I flared it to give it a little bit of a different look bu...

Well, here we go. I have been working on the design and preparation of this project for 3 years. The final prototype was just completed.
This is my second prototype. The first one was a quick (that is a relative term) mock up to see if I had the size correct. I built this out of scrap 2×4s and screws. Pieces were only roughly shaped. After building this, we determined that it was about a half inch too tall.
The second prototype was built as a prelude to actual construction....

Welcome to another installment of the Chess Corner! Today’s topic is turning rooks or aka castles.The large looking one on the left was a first try out of some sort of mahogany pallet scrap and after turning it round realized how open-grained it was, not a desirable trait when wanting to work with small details. So I found a more close-grained wood such as maple that I laminated out of offcuts from a local cabinet shop. This one “turned” out pretty good, pun intended! The la...

I designed this bookcase using the Golden Mean ratio. The narrowest part of the side frames (where the middle shelf is located) is 0.6 the height of the bookcase.
http://www.shininghorizonschool.org-a.googlepages.com/orientalbookcase
The dyed maple frames are doweled except for the top of the center stile, which has two pocket screws. (The center stile and lower front stretcher are not the same thickness as the other frame parts, giving the project a nice shadow line.)
The frames are...

These pawns I turned out of various pallet wood, deadfall, offcuts etc, the three on the right are out of african blackwood, once my final design is pleasing unto me I will turn a whole set. Each pawn becomes a little quicker. I turn them all on 3” faceplates but a chuck would be just as good. I didn’t bother to put a finish on most of them. I could probably have a game of chess just on prototypes alone! A work in progress may inspire others to try as well. I swapped out my 1.5...

I’ve been wanting a shaving bench. And since i can’t help but contemplate the design concepts behind what i’m about to build, i contemplated the fundamentals of how a shaving horse works. I thought “Great. But why not like this?” .. as an alternate mechanism for clamping a work piece in position sprang to mind. The contraption looks to me like a giraffe stretched out to drink, or the head of a giraffe, so I call it the shaving Giraffe rather than shaving Horse. W...

Well, after a little bit of tweeking, It looks to be working… (keeping my fingers crossed). This was just to be a proof of concept (prototype), but it seems to be working well enough that I’ll use it for the rest of the production and make a better one next time. Thanks to all for your suggestions.
!(Working router trammel)!
Sincerely,
Tom